My experiences with Puerto Ricans (who are not immigrants) and with Dominicans, Cubans, and Mexicans, have been overwhelmingly positive, but it's still sad to see the current editor take a swipe at the founder. That said, the point that "just as many on the Right succumbed to a fantastical foreign policy that makes the world much more dangerous than it needs to be, some have also accepted the myth that Hispanic immigrants and their children have high crime rates," shows that the founder's principled Isolationism, the sine qua non for inclusion in the conversation, is still respected.

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Well, my general interactions with Mexicans, Nicaraguans, El Salvadorians and Latino-Americans who are only lightly assimilated have been overwhelmingly positive. For the most part, they have been people of faith, people who work hard, people who care about their families. I find Spanish civilization and literature to be fascinating, and at its core, profoundly Christian (although like all of Western civilization, it has fallen into trouble as of late).

Where I always parted ways with Pat Buchanan was over whether Latinos were essentially "other" or whether they were part of the great story of Western civilization. I have always thought of Hispanic culture (and its myriad sub-cultures) to be profoundly Western. Not northern European or English, of course, but Western.

I have often wondered, what would have happened if Mary Tudor had lived, or given birth to a child? A child who would have inherited the throne not only of England, but of Spain, and through Spain, of the New World. What kind of Anglo-Spanish culture would such a king have presided over. I have a sneaky suspicion that what didn't happen in the 16th century may well happen in the 21st: the creation of an Anglo-Spanish culture, only here in the Americas rather than in Europe. Such a culture would resonate not only in the Americas, but to Europe and even Asia (via the Philippines) as well.